


Pulse

by The_GrxyWxrxn_91



Category: All For The Game
Genre: Andrew Needs A Hug, Attempted Suicide, Depression, Heart Attack, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, detailed depressive episode, detailed suicide, sadddddd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_GrxyWxrxn_91/pseuds/The_GrxyWxrxn_91
Summary: ⚠️EXTREME SUICIDE WARNING ⚠️It was getting too difficult. Andrew didn’t know went it started, but the fog was nearly done consuming him. He was going to end up doing something.
Relationships: Andrew Minyard/Neil Josten
Kudos: 72





	Pulse

**Author's Note:**

> Look, last warning, SUICIDE!!!!!!!
> 
> Andrew attempts suicide!
> 
> This was written in one of my own depressive/suicidal slumps so it’s heavy. 
> 
> Do not read if you know this will cause you trouble!!!!!!!

Things were getting too difficult. 

Andrew hadn’t struggled this bad since he was twelve years old and it had shocked him how much he had healed since that time in his life. He hadn’t noticed the extent of his progress until it started decline too fast to catch. 

There was no moment in time that he could pin point as the reason for his sudden and crippling unwinding. Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe it started a few weeks before graduation. Maybe it started when Bee was taken suddenly to hospital after a heart attack during one of their sessions. 

That was probably a good moment to blame. 

He remembered clear as day. They were in a session. Andrew was expressing his...hesitations about being without Neil for a whole year. Bee was a lot more tense that she ever was. Constantly sipping on a water bottle. Slightly sweating. Fingers a bit trembly. 

He passed it off. He didn’t believe that anything could happen. He had come to see Bee as an ever present figure. Nothing could ever happen to harm her. She was immune to ever form of evil or bad. 

Then she dropped her pen. He watched it roll across the space between them, hit his boot. 

Then she slumped. She looked dead. 

His mind went blank. 

He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t used to this. He was used to blood, wounds, visible problems. She didn’t have any. There was no gushing wound to put pressure on. 

She looked like a wax doll. 

All of a sudden, his body moved. 

He surged forward, grabbed her, brought her down onto the floor. Her pulse was crazy, like a rabbits. He felt her cheeks. Neck. Heart. 

“Bee?” He shook her. Nothing. Her eyes rolled, unfocused, pupils blown. “Pl...Bee!” 

He fumbled for his phone in his back pocket. 

First 911 and then Wymack. 

Wymack got there first, Neil on his heels. Neil’s cheeks were flushed, in his team jersey and shorts. They had been running laps around the court, Andrew deduced. 

“Fucking hell, Dobson.” Wymack picked her up, arm behind her shoulders and under her knees. He took her out to the lobby so the paramedics could get her easily. 

Andrew didn’t follow. He leant his back against Bee’s chair and stared at that fucking pen. 

Neil knelt in front of him, hands on his knees. 

“Drew?” His touch was firm, grounding. They had discovered that this was okay. They changed their trauma, twisted triggers to positive and grounding actions. It had taken the better half of five years, but it worked for them most of the time. Now, was not one of them. “If we leave now, we could catch the ambulance.”

“No.” 

Neil sat back, hands moving to rest omg his lap. He looked disappointed, probably knowing that this was going to be a major set back. 

“Okay.” Neil smiled softly. 

They continued to sit there until Abby came and got them. 

Bee had had a heart attack and was at sever risk of having another one, maybe even a fatal one. She was going to be under strict supervision by nurses, stuck in hospital, on treatments. 

It all still seemed foggy to Andrew. The details blurry like reflection a foggy bathroom mirror. 

Or maybe, it wasn’t Bee that set him off. Maybe it started earlier. Maybe it started with the foreboding shadow of graduating and being alone. Neil wasn’t too affected, due to having friends and Exy and Wymack and being home. Andrew was going off to New York. Alone in an apartment. Playing fucking Exy. 

Okay, the bigger problem wasn’t Exy it the appartments or Bee. It was Neil Fucking Josten. He wasn’t going to kid himself. He had started to get used to that junkie. Like Bee, he had become a constant. And then that constant was coming to and end. 

At first, it was strange. He had this fucking cat instead of his fucking junkie curled up next to him. It was too quiet. Too uncertain. It made his skin prickle with unease. 

Sometimes he found himself just calling Neil even though he knew he’d be in class or asleep or at practice. He just needed to hear something. 

Being alone had never been good for Andrew. Being alone meant being vulnerable. Meant demons could creep in through the door and nobody would be there to know. 

That lead to locks on the bedroom door. Neil hadn’t commented on it when he came over to visit, but he definitely noticed. 

The locks on the doors came from sweaty, hyperventilating, dizzy 3am panic attacks. He’d shoot up after a nightmare, no junkie to follow him to the kitchen and drink decaf coffee or go for a drive to butt-fuck-nowhere.

The clothes on the chair looked too much like a ghost from his nightmares. Or there was a creek on the floorboards, he knew it was probably Sir, but his mind only heard Drake. 

Then the locks on the doors turned to a camera installed into the corner of the living room. 

Neil had commented on that. 

“Expecting robbers?” He had asked. 

“No.” Was all Andrew said before leaving. 

But the most shocking thing to change was his thoughts. He hadn’t had thoughts of death since he was in juvie. Now, they were swarming him like a black cloud of hornets. 

Of course, he hadn’t acted on those thoughts. But sometimes, his forearms itched aggressively or his shirts felt too tight. It was strange to be feeling like this again. He hated it. 

It had gotten so bad recently. No FaceTime calls with Neil or Bee could fix it. He felt like he was being suffocated under a wet blanket. Cotton stuck in his ears. 

This wasn’t him. Andrew had grown. His family had helped him heal. He was better. 

But these thoughts that were not him drove him here. The traffic stormed on underneath the bridge. It sounded like an army of horses. Strong and fierce. 

The railing was freezing under his hands that sweltered in adrenaline. His whole body was dripping sweat and shivering, a mix of the chilly morning air and anticipation. 

He had this same feeling before. When he held that knife to his skin. The whole body trembling. Nerves. A hint of regret somewhere deep down. Except this time, there was Neil too. And Aaron, Kevin, Nicky, Bee, Wymack, Robin, Renee. All these people who he knew (logically) would miss him. This time, he had things to loose, or maybe it was the other way around. 

Andrew fumbled for his phone in his back pocket. 

He chose a number. 

Wymack. 

It rung out. 

Obviously it would. He’d be coaching early morning practice at the gym right now. 

What had Andrew been hoping for? Wymack to tell him not too? To fly over? What? Everything maybe. Be the dad he had come to represent to Andrew? The father figure he never got. 

His mind was full of rotting vines and carnivorous flowers, ugly roaches that devoured the pure images in his mind. 

It all sounded so poetic, but there was nothing poetic about what he did next. 

Sounds drifted away and came back Could be from a memory Cass screaming or maybe Tilda screaming It could even be Betsy. 

Were those sirens. Were they memories. Were they real. 

Hands. He He felt hands on his arms. Legs -not his thighs DONT TOUCH HIS THIGHS- Fingers on his chest. No they were on his neck. Checking. 

For what? 

“Found i...” 

Found what. 

It. 

Found It. 

Pulse. 

Maybe. 

Pulse. 

They found his. Pulse. Not dead. Alive. Pulse. 

~~~~

Andrew’s eyes snapped open. His whole body tense. Sore. Too sore. It hurt so bad. He felt so fluid and dreamy. It would be nice if not for the teeth tingling pain throughout him. 

Lights, beeps, tubes. 

Hospital. 

All too familiar. He ended up in a hospital at least once a month, for him or Kevin but most of the time Neil. Fucking junkie always hurting himself. He couldn’t say that now, considering what he had done. 

“Hey, Drew.” Speaking of the devil. Neil stood there, messy and tired looking. Deep set bags under his frostbite eyes. Cheeks dead hollow. Skin pasty and not it’s usual tan. Lips bitten. Fingers peeled. He looked more dead than Andrew would have. 

Andrew didn’t reply. 

“Yes or no?” Neil held his hand up to Andrew’s cheek, shaking slightly. 

“Yes.” 

Neil touched skin. It burned but it was fine. 

Andrew reached his hand up to wrap around the small, scarred wrist. Pulse. 

“Don’t do that again.” Neil whispered. He was begging. “Never.”

“Okay.” Andrew kisses his stupid emotional junkie briefly. 

“Promise?”

“Yes, dumbass. Promise.” Andrew rolled his eyes. He settled back into his bed, already tired from a small amount of movement and speaking. 

“When Wymack called me,” Neil hung his head, “I thought...I thought you were dead. Robin had to calm me down enough to hear Wymack out enough.” 

Andrew didn’t get why Neil was saying this, it made no difference to the situation. That being Andrew laying almost immobile in a hospital bed after almost dying by his own fault. 

Neil said a lot of things he didn’t understand, stupid things that sounded too soft and caring to be used towards him. 

“How long was I out?” Andrew reached for a bottle of water on the bedside table to help ease the scratching in his throat. 

“Three days.” Neil curled up around Andrew’s ankles are the bottom of the bed. His right leg booted in thick plaster and elevated, like his right arm. 

Neil didn’t ask why. He didn’t pick and pry and dig where he wasn’t allowed just yet. Later they’d talk about this in depth. They’d figure it out. But not right now. Now was quiet and peaceful as Neil just stared. Andrew didn’t call him out because he knew Neil needed this, even if he didn’t blink for five minutes straight. 

“Nicky and Aaron are outside. Kevin and Wymack are organising...” Neil bonked his head into Andrew’s knees. He sighed. “Drew, I know you aren’t going to like this, but you have to go to a hospital for at least a month.”

“Fuck that.” Andrew snapped. Not another fucking hospital. No more meds or therapy or nurses or being monitored. None of it. 

“Andrew there’s no choice.” Neil said firmly. He agreed that Andrew had to go away, it was clear. 

“Fuck off, Josten.” Andrew kicked him off the bed. “I’m fine, I don’t need a hospital.”

Last time, they said it would be okay. Last time there was Proust. Last time Riko got in. That wouldn’t happen again. 

“You tried to kill yourself!” Neil yelled. He was getting mad. “You literally just jumped into traffic. So don’t sit there telling me -me of all people- that you’re fine because if you were fine, you wouldn’t have fucking done that. I’m going to stay in New York until you’re out and then you’re coming back to palmetto with me until graduation.” 

“You don’t need to protect me-“

“I’m doing exactly what you would do if the rolls were reversed.” Neil stood strong and firm. He knew he’d win. Andrew did too, mainly because he was in no condition to fight. 

“Fine,” Andrew grunted. “Just stop fucking yelling, you’re giving me a headache.” 

Neil smiled and Andrew was suddenly taken aback. How could he almost have left this? The best thing he’d ever gotten. The best thing he had? 

He was an idiot.


End file.
